Making Our House A Home | Thinking About The Skirting Board

We’re soon to be extending our house and I’m already starting to think about the finer details. It’s the little details, like the skirting board, that can make or break the look of a room so I need to make sure that every element in the room looks seamless, and like it should be there. I know I harp on a lot about getting things right when it comes to our house but it’s super important for us to not make it any harder for ourselves, especially as we’ll be doing this around the time I’m due baby number three, but also because it’s a huge and permanent change.

Skirting Board Aesthetics & Function

Skirting boards are very much aesthetic, I think, but they’re also very much essential to any room. They hide a multitude of sins – think expansion gaps for wood floors, concealing plaster finishes and hiding wires – and they just join the wall to floor much more effortlessly than you think. Not only that, you can guarantee they’ll act as a scuff barrier and stop the walls getting damaged when you’re whizzing the hoover around. I don’t know a home that doesn’t have them!

Choosing A Style

I’m assuming that a skirting board was once just a practical piece of wood to help with the above household ailments but it’s transformed into so much more than that. No longer do you have to stick with just a plain piece of wood; there are now moulded edges, different materials and you can paint them any colour you like. It’s very much about choosing a style that goes with the rest of your room.

Personally, I’ll be going with something simple because I can’t stand the thought of dust lying on two or three different layered surface areas on a moulded piece of skirting board.

Equally, while the front part of our house was built in 1919, we want this extension to have more of a modern feel – something that’s a bit more ‘us’, built for purpose and is open plan and we’d like the fixtures and finishes to reflect that.

We have lots of straight edges in our plans, but we also have curves that will be featured in the kitchen area so this is something to consider carrying on when it comes to choosing the skirting board. I’m not sure whether

Picking A Material

To be honest, with the kids, we need something that’s durable, not too fancy and super practical. MDF skirting board is hugely popular so we’ll probably go with that especially as it’s so widely available and can come in a a range of finishes.

MDF is also resistant to swelling and warping which means it’s low maintenance and we can always go for something a bit fancier when the kids are older or have left school.

It’s probably one of the cheaper options too, which is great because we’re trying to keep costs down as much as possible to allow us to spend money in the areas we really want, like the kitchen units!

Other material options could be a softwood skirting or a hardwood skirting, both of which have different qualities. One would look better in an older style home, for example.

Plenty Of Colour

I’m honestly not sure if I’ve got the courage to brave painting the skirting board an actual colour, but I’m sorely tempted. I think we’re going to go relatively neutral on the walls and accessorise with colour throughout the kitchen, diner and snug but I do think to try and add something a little extra we might paint the skirting board in a colour other than white. It could be a dark grey or we could really go bold; it very much depends on what we decide colour scheme wise in the end but it’s absolutely an option for us.

I would love, if you’ve painted your skirting board a colour, for you to let me know what it looks like! Or did you do it, instantly regret it and paint it white? Maybe you chose an alternative to skirting board all together?

2 Comments

Keri

June 18, 2018 / 5:15 pm

My friend (15 years ago) had lime green walls and navy skirting & door/frame in her bedroom. I loved it!
A few years ago I wanted to paint my son’s skirting board red and leave his walls white. Unfortunately the house wasn’t ours so we couldn’t do it. Now we have our own home & this post has reminded me I’m very tempted to finally do it!

Oh that actually sounds better than I thought! The only thing I’ve ever had with a bit of a colour was my bedroom when I was much younger – half lime green and half light purple with a very snazzy border… haha! If you are tempted, I’d love to see how it turns out x